home
Women's names
People's Theatre. Types of folk theater

People's Theatre. Types of folk theater

06.03.2019

SCOU SPO "Kurgan Regional College of Culture"

PCC "Socio-cultural activity"

COURSE WORK

Subject: "Folklore Theater"

Prepared

student of group 3 HT

Specialties of SKD and NXT

Vazhenina I.V.

checked

Teacher

Sarantseva Y.S.

Kurgan 2011

Introduction

Russian folk theater

Types of folklore theater:

1 Buffoons as the founders of Russian folk art

2 Balaganny theater

3 Rayok Theater

4 Mummer Games

5 Live Actor Theater

Modern trends of the folklore movement in Russia

Conclusion

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Russian theater originated in the deepest antiquity. The basis for the appearance of its original elements was the production activity of our distant ancestors of the Slavs. A large role in the development of the theater in a complex system of folk dramatic art was played by numerous ceremonies, ritual actions and folk holidays.

Having passed the centuries-old path of independent development, the Russian folk theater had a huge impact on the professional theater. It can be said that without taking into account the experience of the folk theater, without relying on it as a solid foundation, the professional Russian theater would not have been able to historical period his existence to rise to the heights of the world. This alone makes one treat the Russian folk theater with great attention, makes it necessary to study it.

Elements of artistic comprehension appeared in the era of the primitive communal system. Art in that distant era was "directly woven into material activity and into the material communication of people."

The main place in the art of primitive man was occupied by the beast - the subject of hunting, on which all life depended in many respects. In the rituals before the start of the hunt or after its successful completion, there were dramatic elements, reproducing elements of hunting. Perhaps even then one or more participants dressed up in skins and portrayed animals, others were "hunters".

With the development of agriculture, similar actions appear that reproduce the planting, harvesting and processing of useful plants. Such practices have been going on for centuries. Some of them in the form of round dances or children's games have survived to this day.

1. Russian folk theater

Russian folk drama and folk theatrical art in general are the most interesting and significant phenomenon of national culture. Dramatic games and performances at the beginning of the 20th century constituted an organic part of the festive folk life, be it village gatherings, religious schools, soldiers' and factory barracks or fair booths.

Folk drama is a natural product of the folklore tradition. It compressed the creative experience accumulated by dozens of generations of the widest sections of the people. In later times, this experience was enriched by borrowings from professional and popular literature and democratic theater.

Folk actors for the most part were not professionals, they were a special kind of amateurs, connoisseurs of the folk tradition, which was inherited from father to son, from grandfather to grandson, from generation to generation of rural youth of pre-conscription age. A peasant would come from the service or from the trades and bring to his native village his favorite play, learned by heart or written off in a notebook. Let him be in it at first just an extra - a warrior or a robber, but he knew everything by heart. And now a group of young people is already gathering and in a secluded place adopts a “trick”, teaches roles. And at Christmas time - "premier".

The geography of the distribution of folk drama is extensive. Collectors of our days have found peculiar theatrical "centers" in the Yaroslavl and Gorky regions, Russian villages of Tataria, on Vyatka and Kama, in Siberia and the Urals.

Formation of the famous folk plays occurred in the era of social and cultural transformations in Russia at the end of the 18th century. From that time on, popular prints and pictures appeared and were widely distributed, which were for the people both topical "newspaper" information (reports about military events, their heroes), and a source of knowledge on history, geography, and an entertaining "theater" with comic heroes - Petrukha Farnos, broken pancake, Maslenitsa.

Many popular prints were published on religious themes - about the torments of sinners and the exploits of saints, about Anika the warrior and Death. Later, fabulous stories borrowed from translated novels and stories about robbers - the Black Crow, Fadeya Woodpecker, Churkin - gained extreme popularity in popular prints and books. Huge editions were published cheap songbooks, including works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Tsyganov, Koltsov.

At urban, and later rural fairs, carousels and booths were arranged, on the stage of which performances were played on fairy-tale and national historical themes, which gradually replaced the early translated plays. For decades, performances dating back to the dramaturgy of the early 19th century did not leave the mass stage - "Ermak, the Conqueror of Siberia" by P. A. Plavilshchikov, "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter" by S. N. Glinka, "Dmitry Donskoy" by A. A. Ozerov, "Two-wife" by A. A. Shakhovsky, later - plays about Stepan Razin by S. Lyubitsky and A. Navrotsky.

First of all, the timing of folk performances was traditional. Everywhere they arranged for Christmas and Shrovetide. These two short theatrical "seasons" contained a very rich program. Ancient ritual activities late XIX- at the beginning of the 20th century, already perceived as entertainment and, moreover, mischief, were committed by mummers.

The ancient meaning of disguise is the magical effect of word and behavior on the preservation, restoration and increase of the vital fruitful forces of people and animals, nature. This is connected with the appearance of naked or half-dressed people at gatherings, the “pecking” of girls by a crane, blows with a tourniquet, spatula, bast shoes or a stick when “selling” kvass, cloth, prints, etc.

to the holidays and Shrovetide games mummers adjoin small satirical plays "Barin", "Imaginary master", "Mavrukh", "Pakhomushka". They became a "bridge" from small dramatic forms to large ones. The popularity of the comic dialogues of the master and the headman, the master and the servant was so great that they were invariably included in many dramas.

So, the main characters express themselves in a solemn ceremonial speech, introduce themselves, give orders and orders. In moments of emotional upheaval, the characters of the drama utter heartfelt lyrical monologues (they are sometimes replaced by the performance of a song). In dialogues and mass scenes, everyday event speech sounds, in which relationships are clarified and conflicts are determined. Comic characters are characterized by playful, parodic speech. Actors playing the roles of an old man, a servant, a doctor-healer often resorted to improvisation based on traditional folklore methods of playing deafness, synonyms and homonyms.

A special role is played in the folk drama by the songs performed by the heroes at critical moments for them or by the choir - a commentator on ongoing events. Songs at the beginning and end of the performance were obligatory. The song repertoire of folk dramas consists mainly of author's songs of the 18th-19th centuries popular in all sectors of society. These are the soldiers' songs "The White Russian Tsar Went", "Malbrook went on a campaign", "Praise, praise to you, hero", and the romances "I walked in the meadows in the evening", "I'm leaving for the desert", "What is clouded, the dawn is clear " and many others.

2. Types of folklore theaters

1 Buffoons as the founders of the Russian folk theater

They are in the bazaars, at princely feasts,

At the games they set the tone,

Playing the harp, bagpipes, horns,

People were entertained at the fairs.

But who among mortals does not know

As a song gives strength to a tired one,

How uplifting music is!

Careless tribe of merry vagrants

The formation of the Russian folk theater has long been and rightly associated with the activities of buffoons.

The word "buffoon" came to Rus' in the 11th century, along with the first translations of Greek texts into Old Slavonic, made in Bulgaria. It should be noted that by this time we already had quite a few words that were approximately equivalent to the new one. This is a "gamer", "slacker", "laugher".

All these words were used later, when the word "buffoon" came into full force.

A lively little man in an intricate cap, in a caftan and morocco boots sings and dances, playing along on the harp. In the XIV century, a Novgorod monk-scribe depicted a buffoon - a folk musician, singer, dancer - in the XIV century. And he wrote: "Buzz much" - "play better." They danced, sang funny amusing songs, played the harp and domra, wooden spoons and tambourines, pipes, bagpipes and a violin-like whistle. The people loved buffoons, called them "merry fellows", told about them in fairy tales, put together proverbs, sayings: "A buffoon is glad about his domras", "Everyone will dance, but not like a buffoon", "A buffoon is not a comrade to the priest."

The clergy, princes and boyars did not favor buffoons. The buffoons amused the people. In addition, the "merry fellows" more than once found a funny, sharp word about priests, monks and boyars. Already in those days, buffoons began to be pursued. Free living was only in Veliky Novgorod and Novgorod land. In this free city they were loved and respected.

Over time, the art of buffoons became more complex and varied. In addition to buffoons who played, sang and danced, there were buffoons actors, acrobats, jugglers, buffoons with trained animals, a puppet theater appeared.

The more fun it was, the art of buffoons, the more they ridiculed the princes, clerks, boyars and priests, the stronger the persecution of the "merry fellows" became. Decrees were sent to towns, villages and villages - to drive buffoons, to beat them with batogs, not to allow the people to look at the "demonic games". The folk art of buffoons lives in a modified form full life these days: puppet theaters, the circus with its acrobats, jugglers and trained animals, pop concerts with their well-aimed ditties and songs, orchestras and ensembles of Russian folk instruments have developed into separate large areas from the diverse cheerful art of buffoons.

Buffoons differed little from other residents. Among them were small landowners, artisans and even merchants. But the bulk of the settled buffoons belonged to the poorest segments of the population.

Knowing the traditions well holiday games and rituals, saddle buffoons were indispensable participants in every ritual and holiday. It was the buffoon who was the person around whom the main events unfolded at the game. He organized various festive events, including those that gradually turned into skits and then into folk theater performances.

If in the 11th-16th centuries it was mainly the church that fought against buffoons, then in the 17th century the state also actively joined the fight against them. In 1648, a formidable decree of the tsar appeared, prohibiting buffoon games throughout the country and ordering to beat the disobedient with batogs and exile them to "Ukrainian cities for disgrace." But such measures did not eradicate buffoonery.

From the end of the 17th century, Russia entered a new period in its history. Significant changes are taking place in all areas of life. They touched and folk culture. Professional buffoons become obsolete, their art begins to change, takes on new forms. At the same time, the word "buffoon" disappears from the documents. The place of buffoon games is now occupied by performances of the folk theater - a new and higher form of folk theater compared to buffoonery. dramatic art.

2.2 Balaganny theater

Balaganny theater - the so-called theater for the people. He was played in "booths" - temporary structures at festive and fairgrounds by professional actors for money. It has the same texts and the same origin as the folk theater, but unlike it, it has no significance, its content becomes the folklore form of the existence of the text. Instead of mythological showmanship. With a few exceptions, phenomena mass culture(entertainment is a commodity). All the texts of the booth, to one degree or another, are the author's, without fail passed censorship. Partly penetrating back into the village, into the barracks and on the ships, sometimes they acquired a second folklore life (the very notebooks of folk performers that they did not use).

The booth theater appears during the period of Peter's reforms. It was used as a conductor of state ideology. Liquidated in 1918 along with popular literature and fisticuffs.

The jokes of farce grandfathers (and then we should also include clowning, and entertainer, etc.), as well as trade cries, we would not attribute to folk theater. If this is a folklore theater, then it is completely special - we have before us a product of a fair, urban culture. Although there is a developed system of the actor's work with the audience, and sometimes there is also a dramatic text (but not from the dealers), there is still no folklore form of its existence.

2.3 Rayok Theater

Raek is Russian fun, raek is a theater, and a raek, of course, is an artist, and the more talented he is, the more spectators will give him their patch, which caused delight among the public.

“Look, look,” the villager said cheerfully and expressively, “here Big city Paris, you drive into it - you burn it. There is a large column in it, where Napoleon was placed; and in the twelfth year, our soldiers were in use, they settled down to go to Paris, and the French were agitated. Or all about the same Paris: “Look, look! Here is the great city of Paris; If you go there, you'll burn out right away.

Our eminent nobility goes there to wind money; he goes there with a sack full of gold, and from there he returns without boots and on foot!

"Trr! - shouts raeshnik. - Another thing! Look, look, here sits the Turkish Sultan Selim, and his beloved son is with him, both pipes are smoking and talking to each other!

Could raeshnik easily ridicule and modern fashion: “And if you please, look, look, look and look at the Alexander Garden. There girls walk around in fur coats, in skirts and rags, in hats, green linings; farts are false, and heads are bald. A sharp word, said provocatively and without malice, of course, was forgiven, even this: “Here, look at both, a guy and his sweetheart are coming: they put on fashionable dresses and think that they are noble. The guy bought a lean frock coat for a ruble and shouts that it is new. And the sweetheart is excellent - a hefty woman, a miracle of beauty, a thickness of three miles, a nose half a pood and her eyes are just a miracle: one looks at you, and the other at Arzamas. Amusing!” And it's really fun. The sayings of the Raeshniks, such as this one about St. Petersburg, where a lot of foreigners have always lived, became a kind of social satire. “But the city of St. Petersburg,” the villager began to say, “he wiped the sides of the bars. Smart Germans and all sorts of foreigners live there; they eat Russian bread and look askance at us; line their pockets and scold us for deceit.”

2.4 Mummer games

Mummers are important characters of Christmas time. On Christmastide evenings, gangs of disguised youth rush through the streets with noise, whistling, uproar and arrange holiday parties.

The mummers must dress up so that no one recognizes them. He must fool around, amuse those around him with his appearance. Faces are covered with masks. In the old days, rags were used for this, smearing the face with soot.

Many disguised themselves so that they were mistaken for "strangers": an old man, an old woman, a gypsy, a gentleman, a paramedic. Very often dressed up as a bear, horse, goat, bull, crane.

The disguise should be accompanied by games, fun, and it is desirable that the audience become participants in the actions of the mummers. Small satirical plays "Barin", "Imaginary Master", "Mavruh", "Pakhomushka" adjoin the Christmas and Shrovetide games of the mummers. They, obviously, were the "bridge" from small dramatic forms to large ones. The popularity of the comic dialogues of the master and the headman, the master and the servant was so great that they were invariably included in the performances of The Boat, and sometimes even Tsar Maximilian.

2.5Live Actor Theater

The next stage in the development of the folk theater is characterized by the appearance of performances of the theater of a live actor. The beginning of this, the highest stage, is usually attributed to the first decades of the eighteenth century. The most significant monument of this stage is the oral folk drama "Tsar Maximilian". It was played almost all over Russia. She existed in a working, peasant, soldier, raznochin environment.

In November or December, on the eve of Christmas and Christmas, future actors gathered to learn the text, determine the mise-en-scenes, and prepare the props. Usually the lead actor, who is the most experienced person in theatrical affairs, was in charge of everything. The roles were memorized from the voice, and since the texts, with rare exceptions, were not recorded in writing, a variety of changes could be made to them along the way.

The mise-en-scenes there were no longer fixed in any way and were recreated exclusively from memory. The props were the simplest: a chair pasted over with “gold” or “silver” paper served as a throne, a crown was made of cardboard, a sword for the executioner, a bast hung on a rope, depicted a priest’s censer. The costumes were no more difficult. Only for the performer of the role of the king it was necessary to get trousers with wide stripes and attach magnificent epaulettes to the shoulders. On the costumes of other participants great attention did not pay.

And everywhere the actors found many grateful spectators. Folk actors for the most part were not professionals, they were a special kind of amateurs, connoisseurs of the folk tradition, which was inherited from father to son, from grandfather to grandson, from generation to generation of rural youth of pre-conscription age. The same traditions existed in military units quartered in provincial Russian towns, in small factories, and even in prisons and jails.

The love of the people for theatrical spectacles and the power of the impact of performances were so great that the memory of a performance seen at least once was preserved for life. It is no coincidence that to this day one can record the vivid memories of the audience of folk performances more than half a century ago: descriptions of costumes, manners of playing, whole memorable scenes and dialogues that sounded in the performances of the song.

The combination of "high", tragic scenes with comic ones is present in all plots and texts of dramas, including "Tsar Maximilian". This combination has an important ideological and aesthetic meaning. Tragic events take place in the dramas - Tsar Maximilian executes the recalcitrant son Adolf, the ataman kills a knight, an officer in a duel; the executioner, the beautiful captive, commits suicide. Responds to these events, as in ancient tragedy, choir.

The style of folk drama is characterized by the presence in it of different layers or style series, each of which in its own way correlates with the plot and the system of characters.

So, the main characters express themselves in a solemn ceremonial speech, introduce themselves, give orders and instructions. In moments of emotional upheaval, the characters of the drama utter heartfelt lyrical monologues (they are sometimes replaced by the performance of a song).

In dialogues and mass scenes, everyday event speech sounds, in which relationships are clarified and conflicts are determined.

Comic characters are characterized by playful, parodic speech. Actors playing the roles of an old man, a servant, a doctor-healer often resorted to improvisation based on traditional folklore methods of playing deafness, synonyms and homonyms.

A special role is played in the folk drama by the songs performed by the heroes at critical moments for them or by the choir - a commentator on ongoing events. The songs were a kind of emotional and psychological element of the performance. They were performed mostly in fragments, revealing the emotional meaning of the scene or the state of the character. Songs at the beginning and end of the performance were obligatory. The song repertoire of folk dramas consists mainly of author's songs of the 18th-19th centuries popular in all sectors of society. These are the soldiers' songs "The White Russian Tsar Went", "Malbrook went on a campaign", "Praise, praise to you, hero", and the romances "I walked in the meadows in the evening", "I'm leaving for the desert", "What is clouded, the dawn is clear " and many others.

Among the folk dramas there are plots known in a few recordings or even in single complete versions. Their texts (apart from testimonies, fragments) are absent both in the extensive pre-revolutionary archives and in the materials of Soviet-era expeditions that worked in the places where these plays were recorded.

A special, extremely bright page of the folk theatrical entertainment culture is fair entertainment, and festivities in cities on the occasion of large calendar holidays(Christmas, Maslenitsa, Easter, Trinity, etc.) or events of national importance (crowning the kingdom, celebrations in honor of military victories, etc.).

The heyday of the festivities falls on the XVIII-XIX centuries, although certain types and genres of folk art, which constituted an indispensable accessory of the fair and city festive square, were created and actively existed long before the indicated centuries and continue, often in a transformed form, to exist to this day. Such is the puppet theater, bear fun, partly the jokes of merchants, many circus numbers. Other genres were born from the fairground and died out with the end of the festivities.

3. Modern trends in the folklore movement in Russia

Speaking about the folklore movement in Russia, we, following V. E. Gusev, understand “folklore” as “folk culture (in various volumes of its types), a socially conditioned and historically developing form of the creative activity of the people, “characterized by a system of specific features (collectivity of creative process as a dialectical unity of individual and mass creativity, traditionalism, non-fixed forms of transmission of works, variability, multi-element, multi-functionality) and closely related to labor activity and life, the customs of the people.

Back in the 80s, when the folklore movement began in Russia, it managed to focus its attention on folk culture “in various volumes of its types”, and this was already its alternative character in relation to existing folk choirs.

Years have passed and a lot has changed: folk choirs began to mimic, dressing in custom-made costumes and glancing in the direction of a genuine folk song. And folklore groups realized the important role of the stage in contemporary art and began to strive for mastery in this field as well. The picture has become more complex. Sometimes you can already hear that the folk choir in its own way participates in the folklore movement ...

Today in Russia there are two approaches to the development of traditional singing. Considering their vectors, one can speak of a kind of centrifugal and centripetal tendencies that determine the process of creative search.

The first is directed outward: from authentic tradition to individual, and in its essence, author's creativity. At the same time, singers and musicians either follow the usual stereotypes of the existing concert and stage practice, or create their own original version using new creative techniques.

The second trend is protective, directed deep into the tradition - to the development of its "language" and laws, to the continuity of folk culture in its artistic forms and to the maximum achievement of mastery along this path, which requires considerable knowledge and understanding of the essence of the matter.

The first (i.e., centrifugal) tendency is most clearly manifested in the activities of collectives, many generated by the existing in Russia state system training of personnel (its extreme expression is folk choirs, song and dance ensembles and their modern modifications).

Such groups master the folklore material according to the laws of written culture: they most often turn only to the song and musical side of the folk tradition and reproduce its samples, as a rule, from one of the most successful examples recorded in the notes or phonogram.

vocal work over folk song in such "folklore" groups is carried out within the framework of the existing school, which was created in the 20th century on the basis of the principles of academic singing, somewhat adapted to "Russian specifics". Choreography, often separated from singing performance, also uses techniques developed by famous choreographers in the conditions of a professional stage.

Ideas have been established that folklore groups can only be a kind of “sounding museum”, preserving a certain “standard” of a traditional song, or a laboratory for studying the intonation being studied. Such groups proclaim the purity of the reproduction of this "standard" and the absence of any changes in the subsequent performance as the highest virtue of creativity.

In the Moscow "near-folklore" environment, one can hear the bewildered words "folklore is so elitist ..." Yes, if folklore is the life of "standards" and "masterpieces". And here one involuntarily recalls the words of the outstanding Russian folklorist E.V. Gippius, who wrote in his “Peasant Music of Zaonezhye”** in 1927: “A folk song is a phenomenon that is continuously and spontaneously moving and changing, almost unceasingly evolving. The fixation of every moment of this movement is a kind of instant photograph, and each fixed form cannot be considered as something crystallized and frozen.

In another coryphaeus of Russian folklore, P. G. Bogatyrev,** we find the idea that the life of a work of written tradition (whether it be literature or musical classics) is the result of a certain path: from the work to the performer. Folklore is the way from performer to performer.

Pupils and followers of the ideas of Gippius and Bogatyrev, Gusev and Putilov, Mekhnetsov and Kabanov are well aware that folklore is life itself, and there is a place in it for striving for perfection with a focus on top samples, and the masterful performance of a traditional song, and routine everyday work on understanding and restoring the systemic connections of traditional culture in the "various volume of its types", where music is given, although important, but not always the main role.

Collectives of the first type, not only choirs, but also ensembles, have something in common - they live for the stage, which is a defining moment, and folklore samples are just works for performance on stage, and nothing more. There is a transfer of folklore from one system - its living existence - into a stage artistic and aesthetic system, and even frozen in its "greatness", which significantly impoverishes and curtails the idea of traditional performance. Even when both vocals and movements in dance are oriented towards traditional performance, and even results that are very “similar to tradition” are achieved, they are not such due to the introduction of creative laws fundamentally alien to it.

The second trend (denoted above as centripetal), in our opinion, is the most promising for the modern cultural process. It is represented by those, for the most part, youth folklore groups in Russia, whose search is directed specifically to the oral way of existence and reproduction of folk tradition according to its inherent laws. Such groups do not limit themselves only to stage forms, but first of all give examples of the living existence of culture, pass on their experience to the younger generation, filling modern life with the most viable elements of traditional culture and those layers of folklore that are fundamentally “non-concert”, that is, they lose all meaning in unusual them situations. These are groups of ethno-cultural direction, aimed at maximum reliability in the development of the local style and the "language" of the tradition.

It is gratifying that several higher educational institutions in Russia, such as the St. Petersburg Conservatory, the Vologda Pedagogical University, the Voronezh Institute of Arts managed to move away from the prevailing Soviet time stereotypes of personnel training, putting forward the priorities of the traditional direction in the curricula of their universities. At the head of these programs are A. M. Mekhnetsov, G. P. Paradovskaya, G. Ya. Sysoeva - it was they who in 1989 participated in the creation of our Union.

In the last decades of the 20th century, experience was gradually accumulated, mostly by amateur groups, which later united into the Russian Folklore Union based on common creative aspirations. Now we can talk about this experience as worthy of reflection and generalization.

Where a folklore group relies on the knowledge of folklorists, ethnographers, historians, and also conducts its own collecting and research work, serious results are achieved. At present, the Board of the Russian Folklore Union has hundreds (!) of groups from different regions in the field of vision, for which, in joint creativity, carried out according to the laws of tradition, its process itself is more important than the result oriented to spectator stereotypes. (Recall that when the Union was created in 1989, it included only 14 groups).

The idea of "inheriting the culture of one's ancestors", which was put forward by the leader and president of the Folklore Union A. M. Mekhnetsov in the 80s, turned out to be not only socially useful, but also very passionate. According to many, it was she who partly opened the "gateways" to a wide wave of youth interest in their root culture. She also demanded a certain courage from the scientist, because in the eyes of some fellow folklorists she sounded almost sedition.

It must be said that the activities of groups that, with all their creative practice, affirm the idea: “We are the successors of our culture, the traditions of our ancestors,” of course, do not reflect the whole variety of forms of life of folklore in traditional society. In general, there is little room left for the everyday sound of a song in our modern urban life. Perhaps only leisure forms (folk festivals, "evenings"), some separate significant events in family life, requiring the designation of a special moment (for example, a wedding, seeing off, meetings, etc.) or the recreation of a whole holiday demanded by a part of society (for example, Christmas time, Shrovetide or Trinity) actualize the need to express in a song.

Participants in the folklore movement are well aware that they are leaving peasant labor on earth, and with it entire layers of folk culture, the village practically disappears ... The more important it is to preserve the language of culture, the way of thinking, (expressed, including in musical forms and genres), which even after centuries will allow our descendants to get lost in this world and say: "We are Russian people."

The amateur movement is in dire need of the help of professionals, but how can they get in the right amount - after all, only three universities graduate three dozen specialists of this profile per year - and this is all over Russia, where tens of thousands of specialists in folk culture are needed!

In the early 1990s, the Board of the Russian Folklore Union conducted a sociological study among the participants of folklore groups of ethnocultural direction.

This study showed that folklore group members prefer to engage in the traditions of their (or any one) region or region; The basis of its activity is collecting work, trips to villages to the bearers of folk culture of the older generation. At the same time, musical folklore is not the only area of their expeditionary interests: the context of tradition is necessarily studied - rituals, customs, life, crafts, folk costume. Many work with children and teenagers.

It should be emphasized that the members of folklore groups, declaring their "dislike" for the stage, perceive it only as an inevitable form that has become established in modern urban life: but a folk song always needs its listener, and the ability to get in touch with him, affecting subtle and the complex strings of his soul, requires great skill, especially when performed on stage. And here it becomes clear that the stage and folklore are things that are very difficult to combine.

At the same time, the process of their search went far beyond the limits of performing arts. Many folk groups do not even call themselves ensembles. Among the self-names: "family folklore theater", "scientific and creative association", "free partnership", "historical and ethnographic club", "community", "youth folklore association", "laboratory", "folklore club", etc. The majority consider themselves either to everyday groups, but with the need to perform on stage, or to stage, but not alien signs of an informal group practicing everyday singing. None of the bands we are talking about here call themselves purely domestic or purely stage.

If we talk about the method of mastering the material in terms of the frequency of mention, then almost all participants in such groups name the live singing of the bearer of the tradition and the phonogram as a model. Next comes the development of the material at the suggestion of the leader and his own expeditionary and collecting work, in last place - musical collections and transcripts, which are very little involved in the work. Such is the external picture, generalized according to the questionnaires of the participants of folklore groups themselves.

Observing the life of folklore ensembles over the years, as well as relying on the results of the study, one can see that mastering the language of culture is what fascinates these people, whether they realize it or not. In an effort to identify themselves with a group of authentic performers, an amateur folklore group begins to carry the features of this kind of groups. Among amateur ensembles, in the same way, there are groups that are open and closed, even closed, with one bright leader and several, with different types of relationships (authoritarian and democratic), and the personality of the leader does not always coincide with leadership in singing. Therefore, the folklore groups of this direction are so diverse.

Mastering the language of tradition involves multi-level tasks. Since a folk song is not perceived by folklore groups only as an aesthetic and stylistic phenomenon, communicative or group-forming factors come to the fore in the process of joint creativity, namely:

Identification of one's inner world with the life and manifestations of a particular tradition and with those authentic masters who are its bearers. The mechanism of “preliminary censorship of the group” is turned on in relation to their own performance (the expression of P. G. Bogatyrev), and it is one of the main factors in the work of the group.

In the process of developing a common “language”, the so-called “small group” is formed, in which, apparently, the accumulated knowledge and skills have always been preserved and transferred. At the same time, each participant gets the opportunity of self-disclosure, finds his place inside a living organism, which is a small group (ensemble).

Since the continuity of traditions is proclaimed as the creative credo of these groups, to the extent that all work, including vocal, turns into a process of constant personal search and development of the tradition of each individual combined with teamwork. The idea of the continuity of tradition, as it were, “restarts” the creative process that gives rise to the song tradition within a given group. A necessary element of this work is personal contacts with folk performers and material recorded in sound recordings. The performer of a folk song in former times, and now is not only the custodian, but also the "renovator" of the tradition. In joint creativity, the collective experience merges with the content of each participant's own inner world.

Serious work on the development of traditions requires a careful attitude to dialectal intonation and articulation, without which none of the folklore groups can do today. At the same time, it is obvious that the development of ethno-dialect features musical material it happens easier and more naturally where the members of the group are engaged in any one local tradition, and even better than their native region: there are fewer barriers to overcome. The head of the team only needs to help enter the system of sound production, and the presence of a folklorist-consultant allows to ensure textual authenticity and set the limits of variability. The combination of a folklorist and a choirmaster in one person - this, it would seem, is the ideal leader that such a team needs. But a few examples of this kind show that this is not always enough for the best creative disclosure of this kind of group: the very direction of the search is important, the song needs to find a place in our lives.

The search for modern non-stage forms of the existence of tradition, the preservation of its living essence, its free procedural nature, the flexible and diverse functioning of song genres in it in different performing groups - this is what a folklore ensemble should strive for. After all, songs are sung for joy, and it is the song as a cultural and historical phenomenon that can unite thousands and hundreds of thousands of people on this basis.

What was created in past eras acquires a new, relevant sound for us today. The past and future of culture are always present in our present. The old language takes on a new life when a new sound of meaning arises - this is how continuity is carried out. Folk groups Those who have proclaimed the continuity of the culture of their ancestors as their task have a chance to get involved in a living creative process and achieve mastery along this path. This is the key to the self-preservation of traditional culture, its protection from the deadly and alien influences brought in from outside, its ability to creatively process and assimilate everything viable. And in this sense, the participants of the youth folklore movement are creating the culture of today, in which both the experience of their ancestors and its future prosperity are laid down.

Conclusion

The significance of Russian folk theater was assessed only in Soviet times. The materials collected and studied so far testify to the continuity and sufficient intensity of the process of the formation of theatrical art in Russia, which followed its own, original path.

Russian folk theater is a unique phenomenon. This is without a doubt one of the brilliant examples of the world folk art. Already in the relatively early stages of its formation, he demonstrated ideological maturity, the ability to reflect the most acute and topical conflicts of his time. The best aspects of the folk theater were absorbed and developed by the Russian professional theater.

folklore theater buffoon drama

Bibliography

1.Aseev. B.N. "Theater at the turn of the nineteenth - twentieth centuries" - Moscow "Enlightenment", 1976

2.Belkin. A. A. "The origins of the Russian theater" - Moscow "Enlightenment", 1957

.Vinogradov. Yu.M. "Maly Theater" - St. Petersburg "Bud" 1989

.Gotthard. E.L. "People's Theaters" - St. Petersburg "Enlightenment" 2001

.Lane. A.Z. "Theater of the XVIII century" - Moscow 1998

.Obraztsova. A.G. "The Theater of the Actor" - Yekaterinburg: " Blue bird» 1992

.Prozorov. T.A. "Theater in Rus'" - Moscow 1998

.Rostotsky. I.B. "Buffoon Art" - Moscow 2002

.Khamutovsky. A.N. "History of the Drama Theater" - St. Petersburg "Drofa" 2001

.Chadov. PC. Puppet Theatre" - Ekaterinburg: "Blue Bird" 1993

Tutoring

Need help learning a topic?

Our experts will advise or provide tutoring services on topics of interest to you.
Submit an application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.

folklore theater

1. Russian folk theater

Russian folk drama and folk theatrical art in general are the most interesting and significant phenomenon of national culture. Dramatic games and performances at the beginning of the 20th century were an integral part of the festive folk life, whether it was village gatherings, religious schools, soldiers' and factory barracks, or fair booths.

The formation of the most famous folk plays took place in the era of social and cultural transformations in Russia at the end of the 18th century. From that time on, popular prints and pictures appeared and were widely distributed, which were for the people both topical "newspaper" information (reports about military events, their heroes), and a source of knowledge on history, geography, and an entertaining "theater" with comic heroes - Petrukha Farnos, broken pancake, Maslenitsa.

Many popular prints were published on religious themes - about the torments of sinners and the exploits of saints, about Anika the warrior and Death. Later, fabulous stories borrowed from translated novels and stories about robbers - the Black Crow, Fadeya Dyatla, Churkin - gained extreme popularity in popular prints and books. Huge editions were published cheap songbooks, including works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Tsyganov, Koltsov.

At urban, and later rural fairs, carousels and booths were arranged, on the stage of which performances were played on fairy-tale and national historical themes, which gradually replaced the early translated plays. For decades, performances dating back to the dramaturgy of the early 19th century did not leave the mass stage - "Ermak, the Conqueror of Siberia" by P. A. Plavilshchikov, "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter" by S. N. Glinka, "Dmitry Donskoy" by A. A. Ozerov , "Two-wife" by A. A. Shakhovsky, later - plays about Stepan Razin by S. Lyubitsky and A. Navrotsky.

First of all, the timing of folk performances was traditional. Everywhere they arranged for Christmas and Shrovetide. These two short theatrical "seasons" contained a very rich program. Ancient ritual actions, which at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries were already perceived as entertainment and, moreover, mischief, were performed by mummers.

Small satirical plays "Barin", "Imaginary Master", "Mavruh", "Pakhomushka" adjoin the Christmas and Shrovetide games of the mummers. They became a "bridge" from small dramatic forms to large ones. The popularity of the comic dialogues of the master and the headman, the master and the servant was so great that they were invariably included in many dramas.

The style of folk drama is characterized by the presence in it of different layers or style series, each of which in its own way correlates with the plot and the system of characters.

A special role in the folk drama is played by songs performed by the heroes at critical moments for them or by the choir - a commentator on ongoing events. Songs at the beginning and end of the performance were obligatory. The song repertoire of folk dramas consists mainly of author's songs of the 18th-19th centuries popular in all sectors of society. These are the soldiers' songs "The White Russian Tsar Went", "Malbrook went on a campaign", "Praise, praise to you, hero", and the romances "I walked in the meadows in the evening", "I'm leaving for the desert", "What is clouded, the dawn is clear " and many others.

2. Types of folklore theaters

2.1 Buffoons as the founders of the Russian folk theater

They are in the bazaars, at princely feasts,

At the games they set the tone,

Playing the harp, bagpipes, horns,

People were entertained at the fairs.

But who among mortals does not know

As a song gives strength to a tired one,

How uplifting music is!

Careless tribe of merry vagrants

The formation of the Russian folk theater has long been and rightly associated with the activities of buffoons.

All these words were used later, when the word "buffoon" came into full force.

The more fun it was, the art of buffoons, the more they ridiculed the princes, clerks, boyars and priests, the stronger the persecution of the "merry fellows" became. Decrees were sent to towns, villages and villages - to drive buffoons, to beat them with batogs, not to allow the people to look at the "demonic games". The folk art of buffoons in a modified form lives a full life today: puppet theaters, a circus with its acrobats, jugglers and trained animals, variety concerts with their well-aimed ditties and songs, orchestras and ensembles of Russian folk instruments have developed into separate large areas from a variety of fun art buffoons.

Buffoons differed little from other residents. Among them were small landowners, artisans and even merchants. But the bulk of the settled buffoons belonged to the poorest segments of the population.

Knowing perfectly the traditions of festive games and rituals, saddle buffoons were indispensable participants in every ritual and holiday. It was the buffoon who was the person around whom the main events unfolded at the game. He organized a variety of festive events, including those that gradually turned into skits and then into folk theater performances.

From the end of the 17th century, Russia entered a new period in its history. Significant changes are taking place in all areas of life. They also touched on folk culture. Professional buffoons become obsolete, their art begins to change, takes on new forms. At the same time, the word "buffoon" disappears from the documents. The place of buffoon games is now occupied by performances of the folk theater - a new and higher form of folk dramatic art compared to buffoonery.

The relationship of folklore with Russian classical and contemporary art

The origins of Russian ballet are in folk dances, sometimes majestic and melodious, sometimes mischievous and daring. The dance was born of movements subordinate to the rhythm. She is one of the most early manifestations human culture. Dance...

Decorative panel "Red Sun" in the technique of patchwork

Intercultural adaptation. Russian national character

The national character is predominantly a product of the survival of the people in certain natural and historical conditions. There are many natural areas in the world...

Art by Pavel Filonov

The figure of Filonov in all its scale became natural for his era. The dramatic creative concept of the master was formed on the eve of the First World War...

The Art of Soviet Posters and Photomontage in the Works of Alexander Rodchenko

The origins of constructivism go to the theory and practice of the masters of the Russian pre-revolutionary avant-garde: in the work of futurist poets, who, overthrowing all the values of past eras, were directed to the future, as well as in the activities of "left" artists...

History of ballet

By the beginning of the 20th century permanent ballet companies worked in Denmark and France, but the choreographic theater reached its true heyday only in Russia. Soon the ballet began to spread from Russia to Europe, the Americas, Asia and all over the world...

Culture of the nobility of the XVIII-XIX centuries.

The word "dandyism" defines very different social phenomena in the Russian tradition. Dandyism originated in England. It included a national opposition to French fashions...

Russian culture of the 19th century

A significant phenomenon in the cultural life of Russia in the first half of the XIX century. theater became. The popularity of theatrical art grew. The fortress theater was replaced by "free" - state and private ...

The role of Diaghilev in the promotion of Russian choreographic art

The success of the previous two seasons dealt some blow to the Diaghilev troupe, many artists, having concluded lucrative contracts, dispersed all over the world. We had to replenish the troupe. Of the six-week seasons in Paris...

silver Age Russian culture

The Russian religious revival of the early 20th century is represented by such philosophers and thinkers as N.A. Berdyaev, S.N. Bulgakov, P.B. Struve, S.L. Frank, P.A. Florensky, S.N. and E.N. Trubetskoy. The first four, who are the central figures of God-seeking...

Symbolism and symbolism in culture and art

Russian symbolism, the most significant after French, was based on the same prerequisites as Western symbolism: a crisis of a positive worldview and morality, a heightened religious feeling ...

Contemporary Art Directions

The Russian avant-garde of the 1910s presents a rather complex picture. It is characterized by a rapid change in styles and trends, an abundance of groups and associations of artists, each of which proclaimed its own concept of creativity...

Dance as a cultural phenomenon

Folklore dance implies the participation of the audience, it captures the main features of the character and temperament of the people who created it. It is usually a dance of anonymous origin, passed down from generation to generation...

The work of the Impressionists as a manifestation of inconsistency historical era

The most prominent representative of Russian impressionism is the artist Korovin Konstantin Alekseevich (1861-1939). Korovin's work has firmly entered the history of Russian art and belongs to its highest achievements...

It is customary to refer to the folklore theater the dramatic performances that "separated from the theater of the mummers", having a greater "connection with the literary drama" than the latter.

Fun strange and funny

folklore theater

(Fragment from the book "Fun, terrible and funny")

...There, behind the quiet river

There is a high mountain

There is a deep hole in it:

In that hole, in the sad darkness,

The coffin is rocking crystal

On chains between poles.

Can't see any trace

Around that empty place;

In that coffin is your bride.

A.S. Pushkin

It is customary to refer to the folklore theater the dramatic performances that "separated from the theater of the mummers", having a greater "connection with the literary drama" than the latter. However, it seems that if the volume of the performance is large enough, and the plot is somehow comprehended by a modern researcher, then this is called "folk theater". If the researcher cannot catch where the plot is, where the denouement is, then these are "sketches of mummers." Folklore theater includes games: "Barin", "Pakhomushka", "Mavrukh", "Boat", "Tsar Maximilian", etc. "King Herod", meanwhile, although played by live actors, is classified as a crib performance (with which we disagree). Accepted framework for the existence of folklore theater: XVII century. - early 20th century - in our opinion, they are not correct in principle - too heterogeneous texts are united under this term. From mummers, which, as is known, already existed in the Paleolithic, to amateur vaudeville performances, which could not have appeared before the 19th century, or raik, then invented. It remains unclear why, for example, rausny grandfathers are a folklore theater, but the reprises of clowns of that time are not. In a word, more questions have been raised than allowed.

To the history of study. Descriptions of folklore performances have been known since the 19th century: A. S. Griboedov, S. V. Maksimov, F. O. Nefedov, V. A. Gilyarovskiy and others. Ostrovsky includes the “Boat” processed by him in the play “Voevoda”. The most interesting, in our opinion, is the description by F. M. Dostoevsky in "Notes from the Dead House" (ch. "Performance"), which describes a performance staged not without the participation of Fyodor Mikhailovich himself, in the Omsk jail, where the writer was in 1850 -54 years

However, the first publications of texts appear only in 1890: "Tsar Maximilian" and "The Boat" in the journal "Ethnographic Review". Comments: Kollash V. V. and Gruzinsky A. E.

Then: Vinogradov N. N. Tsar Maximilian // Proceedings of the ORIAS, St. Petersburg, 1905, T X, book. 2. - S. 301-338.

Sipovsky V.V. publishes "The Boat" in the "Historical Reader on Russian Literature", St. Petersburg, 1911, vol. 1, issue 1 - pp. 239-242.

The first collector of folk dramas was N. E. Onchukov: Folk drama in the North // Izvestia ORIAS, vol. XIV, book. 4, St. Petersburg, 1909 and separate edition- Northern folk dramas. SPb., 1911. Finally, N. N. Vinogradov publishes a collection that includes four versions of Maximilian (Folk drama Tsar Maximilian // Sat. ORyaS, St. Petersburg, 1914).

Over the subsequent time, three anthologies of folk drama were published: Berkov N. N. Russian folk drama of the 17th-20th centuries. M., 1953; Nekrylova A.F. and Savushkina N.I. Folk theater. M., 1988 and the same authors - People's Theater. M., 1991. Note that all three editions, referring to the same range of materials, have different names.

Among the works on folklore theater, we note the following:

Vsevolodsky-Gengross VN The history of the Russian theater. M.-L., 1929.

Bogatyrev P. G. Folk theater of Czechs and Slovaks // Collection of books. Questions of the theory of folk art. M.-L., 1971.

Krupnyanskaya V. Yu. Folk drama "Boat" // Slavic folklore. M., 1972.

Savushkina N. I. Russian folk theater. M., 1976.

Gusev V.E. Russian folklore theater of the 17th-early 20th century. L., 1980, etc.

End of XX century. The folklore theater, together with the environment that fed it, is a thing of the past. The work of collecting texts is almost completed. The comprehension of the genre is just beginning... So, where are the genre boundaries and temporal boundaries? Where, for example, does the game of "umruna" end and the play "The Boat" begin? Where is the line between amateur performances and folk theater? The genre has yet to be defined. Everyone understands it in their own way, and classifies it in their own way ...

This is how the researcher singles out the folklore theater from the game: "Pre-theatrical, playful types of folklore (mummers, ritual performances, folk-holiday games, folk games) and actually dramatic performances based on a folklore or folklore dramaturgical text..." Foggy. It follows from this that "The Boat" is not a ritual action, but "Umrun" does not have a dramatic text. Both of these are incorrect.

1) On the plot of the song "Down the mother along the Volga".

2) A detailed plot of a robber's life.

3) Option with a love collision.

And according to V. E. Gusev there are: 1) a heroic version (in a short and expanded edition) and

2) melodramatic.

The systematization is based on the "character of the central conflict", etc.

We note right away that neither the concept of "heroic" (as applied to "Boat"), nor the concept of "satiric" (as applied to "Barin"), nor " central conflict"are not applicable to a folklore theater if this theater is folklore.

We will not deny the usefulness of typological analysis. But this is the approach of a materialist - a horizontal cut (a necessary but not sufficient condition for knowledge). And there is also a vertical ... What is analyzed by the researcher - texts, actions - that is, that formal reality, which for traditional consciousness is an adjective, and a noun, the content of the rite - a mystical reality, not always realized, but always felt when " the cold horror of inspiration lifts the hair on the forehead. Follow this mystical reality(and it is a fact of popular belief) is difficult, but it is possible to trace the myth that appears through the canvas of the plot.

So, let's agree: a folklore theater should have: 1) a folklore text - that is, a folklore (pre-written) way of creating, reproducing and transmitting a text; 2) this text should be dramatic (since the theater is the same). But the presence of a dramatic text is not yet a theater - there must be a third condition: a special system: an actor - a spectator. (Along with fun, in the folk tradition, there is also the concept of nursery rhyme. There is both a viewer and an actor (mother, nanny and child), and the text is quite dramatic ... And yet - amusement, not fun. There is not enough distance for the theater, detachment (working on the image) between the actor and the audience).

What is a folklore text? This is well studied in epic studies. Even Hilferding (1871) noted that the narrator does not know the exact text of antiquity - it is recreated in the process of singing. The works are built from verbal formulas - clichés and themes (according to the definition of epic scholars. The terminology betrays their musicological education, but we are talking about poetry) - we will call them in the old Greek manner "episodes", and, finally, from the plot. There is also a melody - it organizes the verbal text in the process of its creation. How text is created only the speaker himself can make it clear:

“I sing, but it’s as if something’s wrong in my gut when I’m silent or sitting. It rises in me like some kind of spirit and walks through my gut. I sing some words, but before my spirit new ones stand up and somehow pull and so it trembles in me in everything. I sing fiercely, then I am fierce, I will sing and live differently, and I don’t smell anything else. And you thank God that he has not forgotten about you, has not left you, but gave you such a free spirit, and a memory.

Now about the transmission: As we noted, the listening must be adequate, otherwise you can simply die of boredom during the many hours of performance of the ancients. Reading a text in a book, without having the experience of switching our consciousness to the regime of traditional culture, we can only appreciate the "literary shadow" of the text. Meanwhile, "transmission" is a joint process (joint meditation, if you will) of the narrator and listeners, communication on a subconscious level.

Finally, about conservation. The folklore text is not stored at all. Remember, please, all those verses that you handed over by heart at school? Does not work. And the storyteller needs to remember not ten lines, but tens of thousands and carry them through the centuries. The "memory capacity" itself indicates that the texts are not memorized, but each time they are recreated from the subconscious "data bank".

It should be noted that each episode opens with a specific formula, has a key formula and, through certain formulas, joins with continuation episodes, forming a flexible, but inseparable thread of the plot. This way of transmitting information is not at all characteristic of the epic alone, but of the folklore text in general (that is, of pre-literate culture). So, the transmission and storage of a folklore text is specific, and the method of creation is preserved in traditional culture and for its written phase: the chroniclers wrote their chronicles at once - without drafts, and the iconographers created frescoes without sketches - all this requires an appropriate form of consciousness, a system of "formulas", "episodes", their own "melody".

If we consider any folk holiday as a text, then it consists of episodes that are based on the formulas of ritual songs or rituals. In turn, the holiday itself is a formula for an episode of the calendar cycle that forms the "text" of the year. The text can also be a hut, consisting of episodes of rooms built from formulas (technological methods of felling). The hut is transformed from century to century, its formulas (“to the oblo”, “to the dir”, “to the paw”) have been unchanged since creation (that is, 6-10 thousand years, as far as it can be traced archaeologically). The same, one must think, happens with verbal formulas. Sometimes they are quite large: ritual incantations, incantations, but at least at least two words: " good fellow", "beautiful girl", "sadness-longing". In the folklore theater they grow to the size of weekend monologues (i.e., they have the function of a kind of conspiracy, where word order is significant). In general, in the folklore theater the concentration of formulas is the highest (according to our calculations : up to 50% versus 5% in epics), which indicates a greater ritual significance of the genre, its closeness to the "original myth", or rather, to a certain "mythological state".

That is why a literate peasant who had the lists of "Boats" and "Maximilian", as the researchers noted, never looked into them. For here the whole point is not in the text, but in the way of playing, in the state, in the sacrament. Now about the time frame of the genre. Why did folklore theater begin in the 17th century? There are no texts or references. However, there are no references before the 19th century, neither about epics, nor about spiritual poems (not counting the historical songs about Skopin, recorded for R. James in 1619-20). And yet, our epic scholars do not doubt the existence of epics already in the pre-Mongolian era. It would not be worth relying on the information contained in the epics themselves. Epic Kyiv exists in a different space than historical Kyiv. Which one came first? Unknown. It would not be worth following Academician Rybakov to look for historical prototypes of Alesh and Dobryn. This is no more reliable than looking for the prototype of the Serpent Gorynych. (The historical song is another matter. Here Rybakov is right, but ... the epic and the song are different genres and more on that later). Mapping methods are more reliable, but even they stop us on the threshold of the period of development of the Russian North by the Novgorodians, that is, in the 15th, at least in the 14th century.

Nevertheless, the conclusions of epic scholars should be trusted - the mythological layer of our epics and fairy tales is too deep. After all, there is not a single mention of capital Vladimir or Moscow, everything is Kyiv, Kyiv. So, by the 12th century, the genre had finally taken shape.

As for "Maximilian", "Herod", "Solomon", etc., these games - let's call them parable dramas - have little in common with "The Boat". They are based on author's works that arose under the influence of apocrypha and acquired a folklore form of existence. Their history begins in the era of professional poets and musicians - buffoons and kaliks (which will be discussed in the next chapter) - the heyday of their activities in the 15th-16th centuries. Of course, the texts recorded by Onchukov and Vinogradov belong to the peasant North of the 19th century and are not identical to the alleged buffoons, but the plots, episodes and formulas - we think - are preserved.

Actually, in the 15th century, as is known, the heyday of Russian icon painting, architecture, etc. takes place. Why do we attribute the heyday of Russian drama and poetry to other eras? Gregory (XVII century) or Volkov (XVIII century) - is this a Russian theater? Seriously speaking, we have not yet had a Russian theater on the professional stage. This is how Pushkin reasoned about this: “Why don’t we have a folk tragedy? It would not be bad to decide whether it can exist. We saw that a folk tragedy was born on the square, formed and then was already called into an aristocratic society. With us it would have been the opposite, we would have wanted to bring the tragedy of the court, Sumarokov's tragedy to the square - but what obstacles!

Can our tragedy, formed according to the example of Rasinova's tragedy, wean itself from its aristocratic habits? How can she move from her conversation, measured, important and decent, to the rude frankness of popular passions, to the freedom of judgment of the square? How can she suddenly get behind subservience, how can she do without the rules to which she is accustomed, without forcibly adapting everything Russian to everything European, where, from whom to learn the dialect, understandable people? What are the essence of the passions of this people, what are the strings of their hearts, where will they find harmony with themselves - in a word, where are the spectators, where is the public? .. "

Our theater descended from aristocratic heights, tasted both rudeness and vulgarity, but not Russianness. Woz and now there. But this is between the lines. The question is different: is the European form generally compatible with the Russian spectacular tradition?

About the fact that there is a dramatic text.

Now that we've given some definitions and jumped to conclusions, we need to check whether we're wrong or... not wrong.

What kind of analysis are texts in folklore? Usually typological. This is the trend of the collector, how true it is for understanding, we could already judge. So, epics, spiritual verses, ballads, historical songs, parables - everything is enrolled in the epic. On what basis? - common form. But no matter how close, say, epics and spiritual verses are in syllable, melody, time of use (so close that it is sometimes difficult to draw a line), nevertheless these are different genres. Bylina really is an epic - a monologue narrative, setting out super-events, that is, a poetic form of myth. Spiritual verse is a dramatic work - that is, a dialogue. The plot of the epic has no essential meaning (because nothing develops in the monologue) and therefore it is conservative. The plot of the verse is valuable in itself (its dialogic nature is the essence of the drama), and therefore it is transformed into subsequent genres. Try to imagine the plot of the epic in a romance! And the plots of spiritual verses - please. They are transformed further - into a thieves' song, into modern dramaturgy and author's literature in general.

Dialogue in a drama is not just an exchange of information - it is an event-driven dialogue: a person is like this, and God is like that, a person is like that, and God is like that! For religious consciousness, any event in the plot is not accidental, but providential. The plot - fate - the judgment of God.

Drama-parables and drama-rituals ("The Boat") have a dramatic text in full measure. This makes them related to verse and rituals (including textually).

In fact, in not a single epic that has the same episodes as poems, dramas and rituals (for example, a costumed hero comes to a wedding), we will not find a single general formula (and the formula is the most "eternal" element of the text).

And the hero will not ask:

For whom do you know me

Who do you take...

And Prince Vladimir will not answer:

For the Prince of Germany...

Why? - The epic is monologue. In the bylina, even the dialogue is conveyed by monologues. Yes, the epic was also performed by several people (artel performance). But still, the singers picked up the text based on the breath and vocal tradition, ignoring the dialogue in the text. The verse is dialogical, so much so that, on the contrary, it does not require any intonational emphasis on replicas. The debate between the Belly (Aniki, Maximilian...) and Death coincide word for word in the spiritual verse and in the corresponding folk drama. There is no borrowing of formulas here. The point is apparently that verse and drama separated from the common mytho-epic trunk in about the same era - in the era when the language was taking shape and Russian literature was being formed. Specific genres and texts, of course, are much younger.

And so, we swept aside the division of drama into satirical drama (there is no satire on social inequality there!); household (and what is non-household?); heroic (he is not a hero, the Black Raven, and even Adolf is not a hero. There are no heroes at all in the drama. There is a hero in the epic. In the drama - an event.), etc.

There are ritual performances ("Boat", "Pakhomushka", "Umrun", etc.) of which only "The Boat" and dramas - parables, which have a common origin with spiritual verse, correspond to the signs of folklore theater. All this in the records of the 19th century is abundantly stuffed with minced meat.

Finally, there is a folk theater (which does not have a folklore text): "How a Frenchman Took Moscow", "Kedril the Glutton", most of the variants of the farcical adaptation of "Boat", etc. All this, as a product of urban culture (fair, seminar, soldier, etc.), appears in the XVIII-XIX centuries. under the influence of "lubok literature", which at one time was influenced by the folklore "Boats". In the folk theater, the main thing is minced meat: an abundance of scenery, tricks, tricks - all that, replaces the mythological overtones, creates a new life significance - the significance of the spectacle, instead of the rite. The goal of the folk theater, the spectacle, is to influence the wallets of the audience, and not the surrounding being. This theater was partially returned to the village and folklorized. In this work, we will not consider the folk theater as non-folklore.

Let's start, in order of seniority, with "The Boat" - at the heart of the action is the myth of a journey to the next world. Oddly enough, it is he who is stated in the Gospel. First Christ asks: "Who do you take me for?" Some disciples answered: "For John the Baptist", others: "For Elijah..." And he answered that he was not Elijah or John, but the Son of God. What happens next, no matter how strange it may seem, is reminiscent of "The Boat". The myth of the "journey" is visible even in the children's game "dead man". ":

dead man died

On Wednesday, on Tuesday:

They came to hew boards,

And he jumped out to dance.

The researchers were surprised: why in areas where the folklore theater is generally unknown, there are whole pieces from "The Boat" and "Maximilian" (N. P. Kolpakova, manuscript, about the monologue "Hello, gentlemen"). And they exist in ... wedding ceremonies. The fact is that these formulas and episodes (like folklore archetypes) are much older than the described genres. When a mummer comes to a wedding with a monologue:

Hello gentlemen...

So I arrived here.

For whom do you know me

Who do you take?

And then this monologue is repeated in "The Boat" and "Maximilian" (of course, we believe that it is not Ataman who pronounces Maximilian's exit monologue, as researchers of the folklore theater notice, but vice versa). Where is he from? - from the rite - the rite is primary.

Focusing on verbal formulas, let's try to clear the "Boat" of minced meat - or rather, expose its mythological overtones.

P.S. Proof of the primacy of the "Boat", in relation to the drama-parables, is the fact (repeatedly noted, but not understood) that in the villages the team of players was called the "gang", and the director - "Ataman", although in most cases they played not "Gang of Robbers", but "Maximilian" or even "Barin".

"The island is Crete in the midst of a wine-colored sea, beautiful "

1. The exit of the ataman. Even before the exit, a gang of robbers appears - mummers, that is, (see Ch. 3) - people from the next world. First song out:

You let- let the owner

Climb into a new hill

Speak the word...

There is a caroling song. They came for sacrifice (drink and snack). They, like the carolers (“Give us a pie, otherwise we’ll bring the bull by the horns!”), Threaten the owner with destruction and robbery: “If you have wine, let’s drink all of it ...”. At the same time, this corresponds to the arrival for the bride in the wedding ceremony (see appendices). The first phrase of the chieftain: "Who am I?" - eat business card pledged dead. And then this monologue is repeated in "The Boat" and "Maximilian" (NB: the word "mummers" itself is a pseudonym - an "adjective" that has become a noun: mummers who ... the name is omitted).

The most powerful act of disguise (see below) is not turning clothes inside out, not a mask, etc., but refusing a name (according to the Christian view, a great sin), because the name has the greatest protective power. The Ataman, like the mummer at the wedding, has no name. The name determines the ordinal place in the universe. Apparently, this is why children who die unbaptized pass into the category of unclean (embarrassed). Their death is not violent (as with all other mortgages) and the only sin is the lack of a name-amulet. When they die, they turn into mermaids and kikimores and groan underground, and in order to calm them down (otherwise, don’t expect good), to say over the grave:

"Be Ivan (Marya...)".

The ataman (as well as the wedding "reader of decrees", the mechonosha of carolers, etc.) urgently demands a name (which, by the way, is unknown to anyone) and, having announced it, asks for vodka and snacks. The later version seems to us to be the case when Ataman asks Yesaul for vodka - he must ask the owner, as in a wedding ceremony. There is such an appeal in later records to the owners, but from the beginning, which got to the end, as payment request:

Dear audience, the curtain is closing,

And we rely on vodka with you ... -

The actor says, addressing the owner of the hut, in the complete absence of curtains, obviously borrowing the first phrase from the booth he saw in the city.

From Ataman's exit monologue, we learn that he lives "on the seas", from his look "the waters are boiling, the stones are shaking." His main occupation is the destruction of ships. In general, before us is not Ataman, but a typical sea king.

2. Having received the required (sacrifice), the Ataman builds a magical ship and sets off for the girl across a certain river. This is what Jason does, this is what Theseus and Sadko do...

Arriving from the other world across the river of death to this one, Ataman captures the girl (note that neither Esaul nor anyone else succeeds), but instead of marriage, a funeral occurs - the girl dies. It must be so, for her fiancé is from there. He will enter into a relationship with her in the next world: she did not die - she was taken away. (Which is also typical for the mourning of the bride in the wedding ceremony: in the parables, the groom, as a rule, lives somewhere across the river, where everyone is not like us. It is called, by the way, in contrast to the rite of divination (where he is ") and from matchmaking (where he is "prince", etc.) - "stranger-foreigner").

Let us recall Hades and Persephone, Minos and Ariadne, the Sea King and Chernava. Ataman must enter into a relationship with the owner's daughter. (NB: as it turns out in an even deeper mythological layer: this is his sister). If this is so, then erotic Christmas games, straw and log phalluses, etc., are understandable (see appendices). Is the symbolism of the act original or does it arise under the pressure of Christian morality? Apparently, it is, because here the act is a variant of the behavioral mask of a mummer.

Let us further take as a scheme the myth of Theseus and Ariadne (literal translation: "faithful in marriage") (remembering that this Minoan myth - the heyday of the ethnic group in the 15th century BC - is known to us from Greek retellings of the 5th century BC . X.). We will compare our conclusions, looking back at funeral and wedding rites, at carolers and mummers. Our "Boat" will be contemporary to the ship of Theseus or Isis. And why, in fact, not, if such complex elements as the arrangement of musical instruments wander through the continents and millennia. And the myth...

Androgey, the son of Minos (Minos the son of the sun god - Helios) - the king of Crete (and at the same time the king of the dead (!)) defeated everyone at the Panathenaic Games in Athens. Offended, the king of Athens, Aegeus (Aegean Sea), sends Androgei to hunt for the marathon bull. Androgey dies. The bull is overcome by Theseus, the son of Aegeus, but in reality the son of Poseidon, the same afterlife judge, according to one version of the myth - the brother of Minos. Minos demands an expiatory sacrifice for his son (14 girls and boys) every year. When he sails for the third time, Theseus decides to go to Minos under the guise of one of the doomed.

3. Minos (according to our scheme - Ataman) takes the victims to his Labyrinth (we'll see what it is) to be eaten by the bull-man Minotaur. The whole situation is mirrored. Theseus kills the mummer (in all the images the bull mask is obvious) of the Minotaur, the stepson of Minos and his own paternal brother Poseidon, and leads the boys and girls out of the Labyrinth with the help of a thread donated by Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, who fell in love with him. Ariadne flees from Minos with Theseus, but Dionysus takes possession of her instead. A storm (i.e. Poseidon) does not allow Ariadne Theseus to be taken away. Here, apparently Greek myth superimposed on the Minoan.

The Greeks attributed many feats to Theseus, including the abduction of Persiphone from Hades.

4. The salvation of the Athenian youth causes rejoicing. There is a myth about dying and resurrecting nature. The rescue of the kidnapped girl leads to the revival of the entire annual cycle. (Our "Boat", we note, is played at Christmas time (solstice)), and the "boat" epic ends at Epiphany, when the "Jordan" is arranged - the players climb into a real hole). It is no coincidence that Dionysus turns out to be the founder of the Greek theater, and it is no coincidence that during the great Dionysius (the main annual holiday of the Greeks, corresponding to our carnival, was celebrated on the spring equinox), Dionysus is taken in a boat, accompanied by bacchantes.

A little explanation: Dionysius, to whom we owe the creation of the European theater, were celebrated four times a year, dividing it into equal parts (which corresponds to the winter and summer solstices and solstices, two Christmases and two Annunciations: Christ and the Forerunner). The ethnographic background of the case (which theater historians usually do not remember) is as follows: what for a Slav was associated with a zhit, for a Greek with a vine. Autumn Dionysia - the day of filling barrels with wine (clay barrels were smeared with clay). Spring (Great) Dionysius - uncorking barrels and sampling wine. Day of competition of choirs and poets (authors of performances).

Dionysus is the son of Demeter (the goddess of fertility), according to another version, the son of Persiphone, abducted by Hades, that is, Dionysus is functionally the same Theseus. The image of the Greek Dionysus is paralleled by the more ancient Minoan Daedalus.

In general, it is rather difficult to speak unambiguously about who is who, because the myth is "mirror-like": a girl "lives" in the next world for six months, and in this one for six months. Who is stealing her from whom? And yet: who performs the functions of Dionysus (or Daedalus) in our "Boat"? - Grandfather. He, like Dionysus, owns cattle. When they call him, he sits in the "shed". Minos also sits in the "shed" built by Daedalus (and his wife, "turning around" as a cow, connects with the bull-Poseidon and gives birth to minotaurs) - but - in the otherworldly barn, and the cattle there are mummers. And our Grandfather has the opposite: "I milk chickens, I put calves on eggs."

Ataman (Minos) without Grandfather (Dionysus) is very bad: having killed a girl, he immediately calls his grandfather:

Gotta pick up two bodies

What would not smolder on top of the earth,

No matter what the worms sharpen,

And the devils did not drag my soul ...

And so on. Talk about mortgages. Grandfather is bargaining - he is deaf, does not understand, etc. - a typical wedding mockery. So do they bury a girl or marry her off? - Both. The burial scene is perhaps the most important (we will return to it in connection with Osiris). Without a grandfather (Dionysus) it is impossible to make a burial. Man, like grain, must be buried and then rise again (cf. gospel parable about grain). (That's why mortgages are terrible because they fall out of the cycle of rebirth!) Hence, in our opinion, the connection with the plow and harrow at Christmas time and Shrovetide: at Christmas time, those dressed as a plow symbolically plow the snow (and sow snow, sometimes real grain in the hut) , and on Maslenitsa, Maslenitsa itself is carried on a harrow, completing the rite of burial of bread.

The grandfather acts here as an ancestor, the guardian of the family, when with his help the girl is resurrected, and the “killed” girl in the “Boat” always jumps up after the funeral, universal rejoicing sets in: the burial turns into a wedding.

In the later "Boats" the image of Grandfather is split into Grandfather himself and into the "priest", who apparently appeared from the parody services of the school theater (XVII - XVIII centuries). NB: texts of "prayers "go round with the great Dionysius:

And a goat with goats walked towards,

Oh, with goats...

Later, another double of the grandfather appears: the doctor. His methods of treatment are very archaic: it is a wedding glamour. In scenes of mummers, the healer (as we think) often replaces the grandfather: he "heals bulls", "horses", etc. minotaurs. In general, "the doctor from under the stone bridge is a pharmacist", this is the allegorical name of the robber. Rogues are essentially both sides fighting for the girl. Recall: Theseus and the Minotaur are brothers. Another shadow of the grandfather is the guide of the bear. But in all its original glory, grandfather, of course, appears in carols:

...Like our grandfather

Three loaves of bread

H... knee-deep.

Typical Dionysus. Was it not him who was taken to our Shrove Tuesday, put in a boat in what his mother gave birth. Grandfather gave gifts to the audience, mocked the girls, treated everyone to beer, swore hard and was called Shrovetide. Sometimes he acted in the form of a sheaf, sometimes - a straw phallus. In the end, he was burned. And Ariadne? - she returned when the fields began to ear. Characteristic of the Russian Shrovetide and ritual sledding, which to this day in the outback are called "boats". Such a dugout "boat" looks like a trough, and even like a funeral coffin-deck. In such "boats" a ritual "burial" of Kupala and Kostroma is arranged. Apparently, skiing from the mountains symbolizes a journey to the next world. Such "burials" (old people were rolled into a ravine) were noted up to the 20th century. Sometimes they say that they ride on Maslenitsa, "so that the flax is long." Ritual burial should obviously provide this as well.

We are very sorry for the romantic version of Theseus' love for Ariadne (especially as Tsvetaeva's presentation), but in the Minoan myth it was different: Theseus (Dionysus) on the day of the winter solstice penetrates the labyrinth (to the next world) and returns Ariadne to life with the help of a symbolic burial-copulation . He swims back and forth in a boat, and Minos (Ataman), who kidnapped the girl, sends a disguised Minotaur against Theseus - his own brother, a bull-like "second self". And so from year to year. The cult of tauromachy (bull games) among the Minoans is unusually high - their sarcophagi are decorated with bloody scenes of bull slaughter, an echo of which is modern bullfighting.

The theme of resurgent nature and travel to another world could be viewed on different myths, using Odyssey or Argonautica for this, but its own theme is closer ... We will recall the story of Sadko - this is also Boat.

How Sadko began to play in the gooselets

As the king of the sea began to dance in the blue sea...

In the blue sea, the water stirred,

With yellow sand, the water was confused.

It began to break many ships in the blue sea,

A lot of Imenevtsy began to die,

Many righteous people began to drown...

Sadko (Grandfather), like Dionysus, of course, is the main musician. On a tablet (there is such a form of burial) he goes to the sea king (Minos), because a sacrifice is needed to appease the elements (this is how the entropic principle of the universe is expressed). First, he takes up the harp, which, as you know, lure mermaids and is held in high esteem by the merman, then he breaks the harp: you need to choose a wife among the daughters (captives? mermaids?). Sadko chooses Chernava (black, the devil is a symbol of a mummer) and, having fallen asleep on her bed, wakes up in this world in the Chernava River (near Novgorod). Meanwhile, the very name "Sadko" - from "a cage" (from the verb - "to plant") - a device for fishing: Sadko in Chernava, that is, a cage in the river - for the fisherman is the same as grain in the ground for the farmer. (There is "Zadok" in the holy calendar. We read there: Sadok is a royal friend (Persian)). Sadko has a lot in common with Vainemäinen. This is also a sorcerer, a singer, dressed up, swimming for the bride in the "foggy Pohjela".

The game of the harp corresponds to caroling, and the perishing ships correspond to the ritual revelry of the robbers in the "Boat ":

I live on the seas

I break ships, barges ...

And how exclusively in Homeric style they steal a girl in our epic "Soloman and Vasily Okulovich"!

Further analysis of the "mythological relatives of" Boats "shows that it was not the origin of the genre that took place in the 18th century, but a complete decline.

"Developed folk dramas arose already under the influence of the professional theater that appeared in Rus' at the end of the 17th century." We think that neither the "theatrical mansion" of Alexei Mikhailovich (1673-75) nor the subsequent "agit-theater" of Peter Alekseevich could have had any influence on the folklore theater. Even if we imagine that some walkers from the people were admitted to the "Artoxerxes action", then, obviously, they would not understand anything there. Another thing, farce theater XIX century. The farce "Boats" really "developed" under the influence of urban culture - they were filled with minced romances and vaudevilles. But this happened only after the mythological subtext lost its vital significance and the “Boat” turned from a rite into a game. Perhaps it will be objected to us that the folklore "Boat" is secondary in relation to the farce, and the mythological relationship with ancient Egypt and Greece is an accident. Then it should be recognized that the mummer at the wedding (with his monologue) and the "reader of wedding decrees", and the "died" and mummers "animals", etc. - all this is secondary and appeared in the 19th century. - Does not look like it. Even in the "Boat", which was heavily influenced by popular print (author's, we note) literature, there is a ritual plot. There is Ataman, Grandfather, burial.

It can be assumed, as, for example, N. M. Zorkaya, that the plot of "The Boat" penetrated folklore from popular literature, but it is impossible to believe that popular literature shaped the wedding ceremony. The lubok novel, like the farce, is anti-folklore, it is blind, it does not see the myth, and thus destroys it completely, replacing it with minced mass culture. An anti-folklore text can be quite folk, and vulgarity coexist with poetry - there is nothing surprising in this. Unfortunately, Zorkaya confuses these concepts. For her, the series "Santa Barbara" is folklore. No. Mass culture is exactly what folklore destroys, it is the result of its complete secularization.

So, the "Boat" is a ritual action, in the subtext of which lies the myth of the resurgent nature. Its performance is associated with Christmas. She cannot be played at Easter (as Maximilian was played), she cannot migrate to the genre puppet den(like Herod). The mentioned myth is reflected in numerous erotic games, both for adults (“Die”, etc.), and for children (“foot-and-mouth disease”, etc.), and also in bylichki about the dead, in the stories of “died” - see . application.

Let's go back to classification. Recall our conditions of folklore theater:

1) Folklore text;

2) He is a dramatic text;

3) The actor-spectator system.

So:

1. Games of mummers should be attributed to mummers - a special form of folk culture. And although there is a dialogue in them, they are monologues. And even if the game has a plot, this is not a theater, because the game does not imply a viewer. It does not have its own dialogue, which makes the text dramatic. Iry mummers is a ritual game. In some form, they already existed in the Paleolithic (see below).

2. When a dialogue occurs in the game of mummers (the actor, as a result, is separated from the viewer - because the dialogue implies a perception from the outside, which is not in the game, and there are both real spectators and afterlife), then we have a ritual dramatic action, this is a folklore theatre. In the full sense, only "The Boat" can be recognized as a ritual drama. Such erotic games as "Pakhomushka" or "Barin", having a connection with the wedding ceremony, may be the wreckage of a "boat shipwreck", or perhaps the beginnings of a myth that has not yet been formed. After all, just as the Dutch oven and the stove-heater coexist until now, so the Paleolithic forms can coexist in folklore with later phenomena. And maybe don't stop folklore tradition by the onset of written civilization, "Pakhomushka" or "Mavruh" would still turn into "Boat" or something else ... All this should be attributed to disguise (NB: many variants of "Umrun", not included in any collection of folklore theater , is much closer to the theater than "Mavrukh", which is attributed to it). Other games (such as "Imaginary master") - there are parable dramas. "Imaginary master" - a buffoon, close to a fairy tale, with "Barin" she has only a name in common.

Ritual dramas were formed during the tribal system, during the period of division of myth into epic and drama. "Boat" younger game"to die", but a little older than the epic and spiritual verse. (Of course, any seniority in folklore is conditional).

3. Drama-parables. "King Maximilian", "Herod". In addition, Rovinsky cites the following parables: "About the prodigal son", "Solomon and the Marshalka", "The Dutch doctor and the good pharmacist", "Eryomushka and the grandmother", "Anika the warrior and Death" (see in the book "Terrible fun and funny"). According to the mode of existence - folklore works, but not ritual ones, reproducing the myth not directly, but through the Greek apocrypha or domestic buffoon. Therefore, not the mythological subtext, which is also there, but the plot of the drama-parable, is the content of these actions. This should also include "Barin" with its many thousands of years old (beginning with Menander and Plautus) theme of a clever servant. Naturally, "Barin" is not an apocryphal, but still - a parable, it cannot be attributed to "boat" rites. He, like "Maxemilian", does not have a primary ritual significance and is not rigidly tied to the calendar.

We can assume that any of the spiritual parables known to us (for example, about Lazarus) could have had a dramatic form. It is possible that the texts of the luboks that have come down to us also reflect the dramatic scenes that took place.

The development of drama parables, as we assume (see below about buffoons), took place in the 15th - 17th centuries. In the 17th and 18th centuries they have undergone a noticeable influence of school and near-church theatre. Some works passed into the genre of the nativity scene and the Petrushka theater, some settled in the popular print, others went into the booth, into the rayek, into the raus, returned to the village in the form of the village "Maximilians". All this happened in connection with the departure of the corporation of buffoons from the historical arena, with the death of their comic, satirical function. Another direction of the Russian drama-parable - religious (tragic), which became the property of passers-by, did not dissolve in the game culture, but developed in the genre of spiritual verse.

4. Petrushka Theatre, Nativity Scene, Bear Fun, etc. - folklore theater in the full sense of the word, having a dramatic text and not only the "actor-spectator" system, but also a clearly distinguished director (puppeteer, bear ...). In addition to the district (XIX century) and the nativity scene (end of the XVII century), it already existed in the Middle Ages. The first image of a bear is from the 7th century.

5. People's theater - folk amateur performances. "How the Frenchman took Moscow", "Kedril the glutton", etc. According to the mode of existence - folklore, but according to the content - a popular novel, vaudeville or "The Boat", which has lost its ritual content, "The Boat", as just a game. It takes place already in the second half of the 18th century. Source of amateur performances: ritual drama, farce theater, popular print novel, author's (including serf) theater. Most of the parables, in the form in which they have come down to us, could also be attributed to the folk theater, but the special origin of the text distinguishes them from folk amateur performances.

6. Balaganny theater - the so-called theater for the people. He was played in "booths" - temporary structures at festive and fairgrounds by professional actors for money. It has the same texts and the same origin as the folk theater, but unlike it, it does not have a folklore form of text existence. Instead of mythological significance, its content becomes entertainment. With a few exceptions - the phenomena of mass culture (entertainment - a commodity). All the texts of the booth, to one degree or another, are the author's, without fail passed censorship. Partly penetrating back into the village, into the barracks and on the ships, sometimes they acquired a second folklore life (the very notebooks of folk performers that they did not use).

The booth theater appears during the period of Peter's reforms. It was used as a conductor of state ideology. Liquidated in 1918 along with popular literature and fisticuffs.

In the post-revolutionary years, there was an attempt to monopolize the spectacle and create a "red booth", from these attempts there were "propaganda teams" and modern parades and shows. Cinema, and later television, became another face of the many-sided booth. Many elements of the farce "gone" to the stage and to the circus, to the theater. So, for example, the cinema of the beginning of the century could not accept the ritual "Boat" and numerous film versions of the farce Boat were created. For this reason (non-correspondence of the form to the content), authentic folklore still cannot take root on the stage, on cinema and television screens. In connection with what has been said, one may get the impression that Balagan is something necessarily base. Not at all. If the literary basis of Balagan is high, then Balagan is also high. So, the theaters of Moliere and Shakespeare were booths. The Shakespearean tradition, as you know, perished: in the 16th-17th centuries, booths were banned everywhere in Europe. A century later, on other roots, the modern European theater grew up. So it is not enough to have high literature, you also need appropriate productions: it is difficult to stage Shakespeare by the same means as Chekhov ... Appearing in the Petrine era, the booth, one must think, played a fatal role in the "sinking" of ritual boats.

7. Jokes of farce grandfathers, rauses (and then we should also include clowning and entertaining, etc.), as well as trade cries, we would not attribute to folk theater. If this is a folklore theater, then it is completely special - we have before us a product of a fair, urban culture. Although there is a developed system of the actor's work with the audience, and sometimes there is also a dramatic text (but not from the dealers), there is still no folklore form of its existence. Verbal formulas from exploitation outside the traditional context turn into cliches, improvisations are invented in advance, and are not the result of a certain state. It's more of a folklore thing. The same raus texts given out at a wedding are a completely different phenomenon and there, in their context, they are folklore texts. But this is already a rip-off. There is a certain theatrical buffoon function in the specific culture of the fair, but we will leave it outside the scope of our work (see A.F. Nekrylova, N.I. Savushkina. Folklore theater).

Results. Based on the accepted definitions, we divided the texts referred to in folklore as "folk theater" into 7 points. All this folk texts, but some of them are not theater (that is, a dramatic text), others are not folklore.

The first point - dressing up - is a special article, more on that below. Folklore theater includes paragraphs. 2, 3, 4, partly 5 and 7. Only paragraphs. 1 and 2 are rites and are associated with the calendar. Such a well-known genre as a fairy tale also fits our definition of theater. There is no error here. A fairy tale is a folklore, dramatic work (many spiritual poems and legends, antiquities and bylichki should also be included here), implying communication between the actor and the audience. The very concept of "narrator" comes from "tell", "show", "show" - that is, represent. It is not worth, of course, to print fairy tales in the collections "folklore theater" in the future. Each genre has its own tradition of publication and study. However, contemporary performers fairy tales should remember what they are dealing with.

The type of folk or folklore theater includes performances of buffoons, the Petrushka puppet theater, booths, raek, nativity scene, and finally folk drama.

The origins of the Russian folklore theater go back to ancient times, to ancient Slavic holidays and rituals. Their elements were dressing up, singing, playing musical instruments, dancing. In ceremonies and rituals, they united in a certain sequence into a single action, spectacle. The first actors in Rus' are considered buffoons. Buffoons were divided into settled and stray, buffoons-puppeteers, buffoons with a bear. Groups of wandering buffoons carried folk art around the country, sang mischievous songs, and performed buffoons. Buffoons proved to the audience at the fairs "Bear Comedy", with the participation of a real bear. Buffoons expressed the thoughts and feelings of the people, ridiculed the boyars and priests, glorified the strength and prowess of the heroic, the defenders of the Russian land. The authorities treated the buffoons as rebels. In 1648, a royal decree was issued on the prohibition of buffoonery. However, neither the authorities nor the church succeeded in eradicating the buffoons.

The emergence of puppet theater is associated with buffoon games. The main character was determined - mischievous and perky Parsley. It was a favorite hero of both buffoons and spectators, a mischievous daredevil and a bully with a sense of humor and optimism, he dressed the rich and the authorities. The comedy about Petrushka remains a monument of oral folk drama, although it never had a permanent text and existed in many variants and improvisations.

In addition to the Petrushka theater in Russia, especially in its southern regions, the nativity scene - a special portable wooden box in which dolls made of wood or other materials could move. The "mirror of the stage", open to the public, was usually divided into 2 floors. A miniature bell tower was built on top of the roof, on which a candle was placed behind glass, which burned during the performance, giving the action a magical, mysterious character. The puppets were attached to a rod, the lower part of which was held by a puppeteer hidden behind a box. On the upper floor of the den, biblical stories were usually played out, on the lower floor, everyday, most often comedic.

With the development of trade in Russia, with the growth of cities and the popularity of Russian fairs, fair spectacles are gaining momentum. One of the most common was Raek. It existed until the end of the 19th century and was an indispensable part of the festive folk entertainment. Raek is a small instrument with two magnifying glasses inside. Inside it, a long strip with a home-grown image of different cities, great people and events is rewound from one rink to another. Spectators are looking through the glass… Raemnik not only showed pictures, but also commented on them, touching upon burning issues, and told proverbs. Raek was very popular among the people. The main thing in the successor was that it included 3 types of influence on the public: image, word and game. Raek entered the history of folklore theater as one of the brightest, original phenomena of folk art culture.

Along with the district committee, it is gaining wide popularity booth. In the 18th century, not a single fair could do without a booth. They were built right on the square from boards and linen. Inside there was a stage, a curtain and benches for spectators. Outside, the booth was decorated with garlands, signs, and when electricity appeared, with multi-colored garlands. The booth troupe, as a rule, consisted of itinerant actors. They gave several performances a day. Basically, these were interludes, tricks, clowning. Singers, dancers, and just "outlandish people" performed here.

Folk dramas were put on holidays in villages and cities. These were original performances on historical, change houses, religious themes and plots. They were played in a spacious hut, sheds or in the open air. The texts were created by unknown authors, were works of oral folk art. These folk dramas were usually performed by people from the people, peasants, artisans.

Along with the Russian folklore theater, there were performances close to it in form, held during church holidays in Orthodox churches. They are called liturgical actions. The heyday of liturgical actions dates back to the 16th century. Liturgical performances were staged mainly on biblical subjects.

Russian folk applied art

Every nation has its art; these are legends, epics, songs, dances, the art of lacemakers, knitters, wood carvers, chasers for metal, and the art of weaving products from birch bark, from twigs, and the art of potters, and weaving, etc. etc.

Many types of folk art have already given rise to folk crafts in ancient times. There are many places in Russia where art crafts were born and still live. Who does not know the famous painting on Gzhel dishes, Zhostovo trays, Vyatka toys, Palekh and X about Luya, Khokhloma wooden ladles, Gorodets painting on the boards?! And Rostov enamel? What about Vladimir embroidery? What about Vologda lace? And although not all folk crafts have been preserved in time, nevertheless, the centers of many folk arts are still alive and there are still brilliant masters in Russia, thanks to whose art the ancient tradition of folk arts and crafts is preserved.

However Not all folk art should be called folklore. Research recent decades led to understanding folklore as oral folk art, expressed in verbal, musical, choreographic and dramatic forms. This means that folklore includes epics, folk tales, folk songs(game, ritual, etc.), the art of buffoons, folk farcical scenes. Ceremonies, rituals, folk games and fun, folk festivals - all this is also folklore. But folk crafts and crafts do not belong to folklore, although they are folk art that actually exists in the life of the people.

Folklore is characterized bifunctionality and syncretism.These properties relate it to primitive art. folklore, like primitive art, syncretic: in its origin and existence there was no division into types of art. Epics were told by storytellers to the accompaniment of the harp; songs were often accompanied by dances, contained dramatic game elements; and the art of buffoons often combined acting, singing, dancing, juggling, and acrobatics. Bifunctionality folklore means that it is both art and not -art, i.e. part of life. This was especially clearly manifested in the ritual folklore, which was distinguished by its spectacularity. Bifunctionality also characterizes such a feature of folklore as the absence of division into performers and the public (which is an important feature of the established art); here - all participants and spectators at the same time.

But apart from these important properties folklore, it also has special features. Folklore features include: orality, collectivity, anonymity, traditionality, variability, artistry of creativity.

These signs in different eras had different meanings, but their complex has always been important; this means that it is impossible to determine the folklore in front of us or not by any one or two or three signs.

Orality of creativity means that folklore works exist in oral form, that is, in the transmission "by word of mouth". Orality of creativity is connected not with the lack of literacy of the population and not so much with the process of creation, as previously thought, but with the psychological need for communication.

Collectivity and anonymity of creativity mean that folklore works no authors that they were created for decades, and maybe centuries collectively, passing from mouth to mouth, were supplemented, but the established centuries-old traditions were not violated.

Traditionality of creativity means certain canons of the content, forms and techniques of creativity. For centuries, certain "rules" have developed that cannot be violated. So, for example, in fairy tales there are always beginnings. This is a tradition, a canon. In the content - the hero goes through three trials - this is also canon. In the finale, evil is defeated, good triumphs - this is also a canon. Telling tales was also supposed to be told in a certain way, and wonderful storytellers and storytellers knew How it needs to be done. Unfortunately, today this tradition sayings the tale has not been preserved. The details included in many ceremonies and rituals have also been lost, other details have been preserved, but their symbolic meaning and meaning have been lost.

Creative variability. This sign is associated with the anonymous nature of his work and means that the same work of folklore exists in dozens of variants, depending on the locality of existence. But one must distinguish between variability folklore work from a distorted copyright, in the process of existence of which the text (or melody) has changed. For example, some authors have a lot of works that “gone to the people”: “Why are you looking eagerly at the road”, “Peddlers” by N.A. Nekrasov, some poems by S.A. Yesenin, which became songs, etc. If in different places we find different text and different melody, then this is not a manifestation of variability, but a distortion of the author's text and melody composed by the composer.

The artistry of creativity is a very important feature of folklore. In pre-revolutionary science, it was believed that all that art that is not recognized by society, since it does not meet the aesthetic criteria that prevail in society in given time, should be attributed to folklore. However, this is a deeply erroneous statement, because each type of art and folklore has its own imagery, its own system of expressive means, its own aesthetics. Therefore, we should talk about aesthetics of folklore, different from the aesthetics of the "scientific" art we are accustomed to.

The heyday of folklore came in the 17th century. The beginning of the reforms of Peter 1, the development of foundry, manufactories, etc. entailed the gradual destruction of that patriarchal way of life in which folklore successfully developed and lived. Its social base was the peasant community, which was hit by Peter's economic reforms. Consequently, folklore began to collapse. This process took place in different regions unevenly: in some regions, economic processes were active, destroying the subsistence economy and, accordingly, the base of folklore. In others, these processes took place slowly (in the Russian "outback", in the northern, western, southern, Siberian provinces), and many types of folklore were preserved there.

Currently, song and dance forms of folklore are alive in villages remote from industrial centers. Gone are the storytellers; in many ceremonies, rituals, the significance of their individual details has been lost, the traditions of many festivities and folk games have been lost, because all this has long since disappeared from folk life. Loss of folklore - objective historical process. Attempts to preserve some of its forms are commendable, but, unfortunately, they are not carried out in the name of folklore itself; most often this is facilitated by commercial interest. Therefore, there is so much pseudo-folklore today.

Among the many forms of folklore was this - folk theater.

folklore theater- a peculiar phenomenon in the Russian folk artistic culture, a phenomenon in which the concepts of "folklore" and "theatre" are combined. Until now, experts disagree on the definition of the concept of "folklore theater". Some believe that folklore theater is everything in folklore that has spectacularity- ceremonies, rituals, games, mass actions, festivities, etc. Others refer to the folklore theater performances based on oral folk drama. Who is right? To answer this question, let us recall the specific features of theatrical art. Among them will be spectacularity, and efficiency, and the game, and collectivity creativity, and artistry,(and a number of others), i.e. features characteristic of both theater and ritual folklore. But the content of these signs will be different.

Ritual entertainment – necessary element the rite itself and exists above all for its members. Such entertainment traditional, traditional, cannot contain an individual beginning. The spectacle of a theatrical performance exist for the public. It is inextricably linked with the artistic expressiveness of the performance. She is conceived and embodied in dramatic action. The spectacle of each performance individual.

Effectiveness can be seen in a whole range of ceremonies, rituals, festivities, etc. But, in contrast to the effectiveness of a theatrical performance, there is no drama in ritual activity, no dramatic struggle, no conflict. The theater is inconceivable without conflict, without dramatic struggle. Consequently, effectiveness in theatrical art presupposes drama and dramatic conflict.

The game of life is a means of satisfying the need for the game itself of its participants.

Playing in the theater- it a way for an actor to create an artistic image, the character of a particular character. This is a way to express conflict. Such a game is a means of satisfying the aesthetic demands of the public.

Collectivity of creativity in folklore means impersonality, anonymity, lack of authorship. In theatrical art This is a huge team of actors, an artist, a composer, costume designers, make-up artists, lighting designers, sound designers, stage workers, etc. organized and directed by the director towards a single goal - the creation of a performance. Wherein Creativity of each participant is deeply individual. And authorship is manifested in the work of each participant in the performance.

Image - characteristic feature of art. AT folklore theater this is a mask image, i.e. traditional, canonical image of this or that folklore character, denoted by certain details of the costume, make-up, props. The creation of such an image does not require the individualization of its character traits, on the contrary, traditional performance should be observed here. This is an essential feature of folklore. artistry.(Here, for example, is how the costume of some folklore heroes expresses: Lady - a cap, umbrella and fan; Gypsy - a red shirt, boots; Pop - a beard made of tow, a wooden cross in his hand; Goat - the performer is covered with a sheepskin coat, turned inside out, etc. .).

For theater arts an individual beginning in creating the image of a character is characteristic, the created image itself is endowed with many individual traits character. Traditionalism, canonicity of performance is inappropriate here. It would be a pity to see the same Hamlets and other heroes of Shakespeare's plays on the stages of the theaters of the world, recognizable by the costume, details of the props, make-up. For several hundred years on theater scenes world created great creations different actors; the history of the world theater included the famous creators of the image of Hamlet: the Englishman David Garrick, the Italian Eleonora Duse, the German Devrient, many others, as well as the actors of the Russian theater Mochalov, Karatygin, and in our time - the famous Laurence Olivier, Innokenty Smoktunovsky and a number of other great actors. Each of them has “his own” Hamlet.

The folklore theater, of course, has lost such properties of folklore as syncretism and bifunctionality: it already has a clear division into “artists” and “audience” (although the “artists” were fellow villagers of the “spectators”); and he himself clearly gravitates towards the art of the theater (that is, he breaks with folklore syncretism). Over the many decades of its existence, it has appeared and own dramaturgy which, by the way, has not lost its connection with the folk tradition. Therefore, it can be said that folklore theater is a theater of oral folk drama . There are mainly three major dramas - "Tsar Maximilian", "The Boat", "A Gang of Thieves", as well as smaller ones - "The Black Raven", "Ermak", "How the Frenchman Took Moscow", "Parasha". Variants are also known. There are also satirical dramas: "The Master", "The Imaginary Master", "Mavruh", "Pakhomushka". Collectors of Russian folklore recorded them. "Tsar Maximilian" was first recorded in 1818, other dramas were recorded later. Hence, in early nineteenth century there was still a folklore theater. But, apparently, its heyday took place earlier. He lived in the villages. Performances were prepared in advance and usually took place at Christmas time or during Shrove Tuesday. Wandering actors (from former buffoons) and the most "troubled" guys in the village took part in the performances, those who were distinguished by resourcefulness, sense of humor and were considered recognized artists, those who know the traditions performance of certain roles.

If we read the text of any of the oral folk dramas, then we will not get any idea about the performance, because the plot, for example, “Boats” or “Gangs of Robbers” is quite primitive, inspired by the “exploits” of ataman Stenka Razin. It contains borrowings from folk songs, and from folk legends, and from literary sources. The plot itself is very sketchy. All the audience knew the content of the upcoming performance in advance. But all dignity theatrical performance was not to introduce the audience to m plot, but what kind of improvisational interludes between the "tragic" scenes will arise today. These farcical interludes were in no way connected with the main plot of the oral drama, and the audience could turn to the "artists" directly from the "hall", and they usually deftly parried all the attacks of the audience. This was the main pleasure from such a spectacle-game. But it was this ability to improvise that was lost in the first place.

The economic reforms in Russia initiated by Peter marked the beginning of the destruction of the way of life (i.e., the peasant community) that nourished folklore and contributed to its flourishing. The further development of commodity-money relations was more and more reflected in the state of the village community and the state of folklore. By the twentieth century, many types of folklore were lost. Modern amateur art is a qualitatively new phenomenon. Some scholars try to present it as the folklore of our day. But such a statement scientific point vision is not correct. Modern amateur performances do not correspond to any of the signs of folklore; it qualitatively new folk art.

There were attempts to suggest that modern theatrical amateur performances take the path of folklore creativity: to revive the oral folk drama. But very soon it became clear that the folklore theater was not viable and its revival in an amateur theater was futile, it could not lead to creative success. Occasionally, some directors boasted that they had turned to folklore theater and were reaping success. However, in fact, those were performances in which only some elements folklore expressiveness, which is quite appropriate. One brilliant example of a folklore performance could be cited here: it was a performance by the Skomorokh Theater in the 1970s. of the last century, staged by Gennady Yudenich. It was the history of our country, presented in folklore aesthetics and expressiveness. But this creative success is, unfortunately, the only example.